modern slavery:" The area has seen six cases of involuntary servitude success- fully prosecuted in the past six years. Describing local migrant-contractor power dynamics, Michael Baron, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol who knows Florida well, told me, "Most of the time, these workers are housed miles from civilization, with no telephones or cars. They're controllable. There's no es- cape. If you do escape, what are you gonna do? Run seventeen miles to the nearest town, when you don't even know where it is? And, if you have a brother or a cousin in the group, are you gonna leave them behind? You gonna escape with seventeen people? You'll make tracks like a herd of elephants. Who- ever's got you, they'll find you. And heaven help you when they do." I n February of 2001, Adan Ortiz de- cided to leave his home in the Mexi- can state of Campeche, on the Yuca- tán Peninsula, where he lived with his wife and six children in a one-room straw hut, to look for a job in the United States. Since the age of nine, he had worked with a machete and an axe, clearing brush for local ranchers or har- vesting sugarcane. f " 1!: 1 1WJ\SM . :::: :.: ; : :::::=?:: : -:. . . :"-:< ... ; .. "V:..,.;.,:.:,..;.;,.:......,;........-.... :IF:" < . ;.c..:- . __m..<::'..&........: : .... i -t . . : .1 :.,<C;. ; 0'" "..A. . .. .. ...s d' '". '0'21 . \:. r . ..;'<:!f: t.' >> 1''' :'.:' f:;j < . ",\- at . .\ <!>js! 18" (':::, . ::: :.' 'hW' . ,t G) .@ L+ / :. . w . . ..' .,. ... "( ,....:.: .. :< / '..;",1 "'., . :": .::\: . :..(..:;: {,i.,,! }, :.: :." . . . · ! l' . ," -::: .,:': : ' --.... .: .....:.:,.;, . . :,:,,:' .;: : , ; .. ;:1 "::. . . ,":& ",{. ,. . ....r. {. ...., , ; I i :- : : . ... 4<. "';: ': h. . ;: un. > "... W" : . ,:':1 ):. " . . % 0, i :i l r :... ^ ;W xA !1 . . " -, :.....X:" . $ '.,0 .;,.......,.,...' .....:,;.... '". .,:... $ '.. _3>:S;. . ::.-.:;,;......: ./: .' ... . .::... . Ii" J . ..... . ow." ,: ,,;r Ortiz gets along in Spanish, but his first language is Mixe, a Mayan lan- guage spoken by the Mixe Indians, in southern Mexico. He is short (about five-two) and stocky, with a mustache and soft brown eyes, and looks younger than his thirty-eight years. He has an earnestness about him, and speaks with a studied reserve. When he was asked recently if he had ever owned any land, he almost laughed. "I don't even own the dirt under my fingernails!" F armwork in Mexico pays about five or six dollars a day-when it's available. Ortiz considered himself lucky to find work two or three days a week near his home. The only way to bring in more income was to bum around the coun- tryside, looking for work, and there was seldom enough to maintain a famil "People use the term 'provide for' just to refer to a plate of beans and salsa and some tortillas," Ortiz explained. "I think for a family you've got to have . lk Ri h " ml. g t. Ortiz left Mexico with two friends. (The three men are referred to in federal documents only by their initials, and I have changed their names.) None of them had gone to school beyond sixth grade. The youngest, eighteen-year-old - \;.. ''''''- I ..::;1" '"" ";; . f. ; -. )kfli rl '. . ', . : . . . . .. . . . . . , > . : ,; -:; . .. . ; >: i \ "Q J / , \ k .,.,. .yu" ,u u >C" . v, - ,.sV' U . d v<<nl , . .." ... --- .tæ." : .:' #:: : ":-' -:. . ÞJ t, \}i -W". .l. . . : . . . . . . /';:{/.'; . ". ÒANA "fRJ)'QoJ "Teach a man to fish and you eat fish every damn day. " Rafael Solis Hernandez, lived in his mother's house with his wife and bab Mario Sanchez, the father of six chil- dren, lived in a house built of cardboard. At forty-three, he had difficulty recalling his birthda He explained, "It's never been celebrated, so I don't even concern myself with it." To travel north, Sanchez brought what money remained from a crop of peppers he'd managed to grow the year before. Ortiz borrowed twenty- five hundred pesos (about two hundred and fifty dollars) from a man he occa- sionallyworked for, and Hernandez bor- rowed the money from his mother. They crossed the border with a large group in early March, in the care of a "coyote," or smuggler, and found them- selves in the town of Marana, Arizona. None of them had any money left, but the coyote introduced them to a man they nicknamed EI Chaparro (Shorty), who gave them pennission to sleep in an abandoned trailer home. Thirty-five of them did so for about a week. Then EI Chaparro offered to drive them to a place where they could get jobs picking oranges. Terms were never discussed. Ortiz, Hernandez, and about a dozen others were packed into EI Chaparro's rickety van, and the group set forth, ac- companied by a car carrying five more passengers, including Sanchez. The trip lasted three days. EI Chaparro stopped once for an hour or two to sleep, but passengers were forbidden to get out, even to relieve themselves. For that purpose, a jug was passed around. When asked whether they ate during this time, Ortiz shrugged, and an- d '" T d . d ' h " swere , vve 1 nt ave money. On March 13th, more than three weeks after leaving home, the men reached their destination: Lake Placid, a low-lying town in the swamps of South Florida, about sixty miles north of Immokalee. The van stopped in front of a Mexican grocery store named La Guadalupana, and the passengers were ordered to stay put while EI Cha- parro got out and talked to two labor contractors, who were later identified to the migrants by their nicknames, Nino and EI Diablo. EI Diablo, whose real name is Ra- miro Ramos, is a short, solidly built man with close-cropped, graying hair, an impassive manner, and bloodshot eyes. Born in Guanajuato, Mexico, he arrived